Carl Paladino: our homophobic gubernatorial candidate

Carl Paladino, the rich nutcase who is running on the Republican ticket for governor in New York, just blasted forth some more hate speech - this time about gay people. He was addressing an Orthodox Jewish audience at Congregation Shaarei Chaim in Brooklyn (source: Paladino Attacks Gays in Brooklyn Speech).

“I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t,” he said, reading from a prepared address.
And then, to applause at Congregation Shaarei Chaim, he said: “I didn’t march in the gay parade this year — the gay pride parade this year. My opponent did, and that’s not the example we should be showing our children.” Newsday.com reported that Mr. Paladino’s prepared text had included the sentence: “There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual.” But Mr. Paladino omitted the sentence in his speech.

One of the rabbis accompanying Paladino is named Yechezkel Roth, who is quoted on the "Jews Against Zionism" site with virulently anti-Zionist remarks (in Hebrew) on this page: Jews Against Zionism. Rabbi Roth also participated in a demonstration this summer in New York against the building of a new emergency room for the hospital in Ashkelon (on the pretext that it was being built on a Jewish graveyard from late antiquity, which it isn't - the archaeological remains clearly show it was a non-Jewish cemetery because a pagan temple was also found there). See VosIzNeias for a photo of him at the demonstration: Anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidim Protest.

Is this a man that Carl Paladino really wants to be associated with? It certainly won't endear him to the New York Jewish community, which is mostly quite Zionist.